


Give Me Hope in Silence

by frostings



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 09:14:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3062276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frostings/pseuds/frostings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is still some beauty left in the ruins of a past love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Give Me Hope in Silence

**Author's Note:**

> As fantastic as it is to interact with a romanceable Cullen in DA:I, I still have the softest of spots for his love for the f!mage Warden.The events in the Circle (and her) are never far from his mind even in DA:I so I just wanted to expand on that a little more.

i.

He dreamt about the day she left.

He had been coming back from a patrol he had volunteered for when they encountered the Grey Warden, Amell following closely behind. He could see she was shivering under her cloak, hugging her small bundle of possessions as a child would a treasured doll.

“Conscripted,” he heard someone behind him whisper. There had been rumors and speculations that the Grey Warden would be taking one of the templars to join their group. The man had actually been accompanied by the Knight Commander to oversee some practice skirmishes.

“Greagoir can’t be happy about this,” another added.

Lieutenant Alwyn gave the group a warning look that commanded silence. Cullen could feel his heart thrumming in his chest as his mind raced through a million scenarios. What could have happened in the Tower in the short hours that he was away?

But there would no time for questions, even less time for answers. They could only keep still and watch, as the Grey Warden and the lieutenant exchanged stiff nods. Alwyn knew better than to question a member of the Grey. Everyone knew that once one was conscripted, no other earthly power could prevent from having that order carried out.

Behind Duncan, Cullen saw that Amell was scanning his group. She could not tell them apart because of the helmets, and one foolish part of him hoped that she knew, somehow, that he was there. She smiled weakly at them, that smile that he loved seeing, flashed behind the cover of a book, before she blew the candle out at lights out. But now, she was just trying to be brave.

“Goodbye,” she whispered with the urgency of someone who had not been given time to part with everything she’d ever known. Her lips trembled. “Goodbye.”

He could not say anything. Not a single word.

 

He had wandered in the hallways dazed and unseeing in the days that followed, as if he had been struck by lightning. He stood in front of her room, the room that she didn’t have the chance to occupy, and wondered if she was alright, if she was even thinking about him.

 _You think she even knows your name?_ something seethed in his mind.  _A fool until the end, Cullen._ Outside, the skies darkened, the screams reverberated, shaking the Tower’s foundations. The smell of sulfur filled the air, choking him. Behind him, a pair of arms, tinged purple and blue, clammy and cold, snaked around him.

 _Why don’t you love me instead, Cullen?_ She hissed in his ear.  _I’m more real than she could ever be. I could give you everything…_

He opened his mouth to scream, but the sound was extinguished in his throat.

ii.

The demons had violated the bodies of his brothers-in-arms, long after they lay dead and rotting. Cullen shut his eyes against the image, but they were burned behind his eyelids and refused to fade. They did it to break him—the shells of what his brothers had been were no use to them, but they used it as tools when promises of carnal desires fulfilled did not sway him.

 _“Aren’t you tired, Cullen?”_  A sloth demon was saying, using Lieutenant Alwyn’s face, one eye hanging loose in his socket. Pustules broke out on his brother’s skin, oozing pus and smelling of rot. Cullen closed his eyes, clasped his hands together, holding tight, holding on for dear life.

“Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter,” he prayed with the fervor of the desperate, his voice breaking. Tears spilled down his face, and would not stop.

 _“It is so peaceful here. Join us. It’ll be just like old times,”_ Alwyn sounded just like he did when he was alive, when he was…oh Maker.

“Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just!”

The other corpses stirred, and slowly began to rise. Metal clanked as Cullen watched, horrified, as the dead rose in a macabre dance. They crawled and reached out, whispering, calling, always calling.

_“Cullen”_

_“Brother.”_

The room was deathly cold. Icy fingers wrapped around his wrist. If the Chant of light had any other words, it was beyond him now.

“No…please…” he pleaded as he kicked the grasping hands away. “No, PLEASE! LEAVE ME!”

But all they did was laugh and laugh and laugh.

iii.

“Aren’t you coming, Cullen?”

Amell lingered near the doorway of the hall, a hint of smile tugging at her lips, hopeful and a bit nervous at the same time. How they had managed this tentative friendship, built on small words, he would never understand. But he lived for it, for the few seconds that she would approach and say hello, that she would smile and laugh with him.

He tried to show how sorry he was. “Forgive me, I cannot.”

“But it’s the harvest moon festivities, surely there are some exceptions…!”

“I can’t leave my post, Amell. I’m—I’m really sorry.” He felt like kicking himself for sounding so sorry. He didn’t want to seem too over-eager to be in her presence, which, of course he was. This transparency when it came to her was probably why he was relegated to duty on a holiday in the first place. Greagoir was no fool, and people were bound to talk.

She gave a long, exaggerated exhale. “Fine. I knew you would say that. So, here.” She drew nearer and he fought a blush from creeping up his face. She handed him a sprig of tiny flowers, delicately white and pink. Apple blossoms. They smelled like her.

“Outside, it’s Autumn, you know,” she said in a strangely hushed voice.

 _She’d always wanted to be outside the Tower and see the world for herself._  He didn’t know why he knew this about her, but he did.

She shook her head, as if to clear it. “I’ll see you later, Cullen. I’ll try to put aside some cider for you, yeah?”

He nodded, his tongue suddenly feeling thick just by the nearness of her. “Alright.”

She smiled in that gentle way of hers and disappeared around the corner. Before she did, he almost called out to ask her to come back. But he didn’t. And he never would, again. That would be one of the last times he would see her.

If he breathed in deeply enough, he could still smell the apple blossoms.

(Sometimes, this dream tortures him more than the others.)

iv.

He dreamt of the day Haven was attacked and his army slaughtered. He watched, paralyzed, as all the lives that had depended on him fall into an abyss, never to be seen again.

He wanted to forget the faces of the fallen. He wanted to remember.

He watched her die over and over again, between the cruel teeth of an Archdemon, her blood running thick on the ground.

He woke up to an unfamiliar voice. (IS he awake?)

_They asked questions. Questions that hurt._

_Soft is good, soft is sweet, soft is what she liked, what she is. But soft is weak, what they seek. Must be strong, must be stone, must be bone. But the red bled through the stone and left them too far gone._

Then suddenly he was back in his study in Skyhold, and the shadows disappear. But that strange scarecrow child is perched at the edge of his desk, looking at him closely. The child spoke, but the words seemed to echo in his mind.

"They wore her face and pulled the strings, but they couldn’t get everything. Not the apple blossoms, not the rain, not even the day when you went away. She was your delight, and they took delight in your torment and made her your pain." He spoke quickly and he raised one pale hand. "We can take it away, Cullen. So it won’t—" the child struggled for words. "So it won’t _bleed_ anymore.”

By all rights, Cullen should be terrified. Of this thing invading his dreams, promising his something. It’s too much like what a demon would do. But above all things, Cullen was exhausted. He pushes the hand away.

"Thank you, Cole.  But I’m alright. I’ll be alright." He said in a manner that he hoped was convincing.

He wakes up again, and for the first time for a long time, the dreams did not linger.

v.

Without the lyrium, it seemed sometimes like the dreams would bleed out. He would oversee a practice duel and call out the name of a Templar recruit long dead. He would catch himself calling Cassandra   _Knight Commander,_ when in the middle of a tactical dispute with the Seeker. Sometimes, he sees Amell out of the corner of his eye, disappearing around the corner. Once, he found apple blossoms in between his book pages, pressed carefully to preserve their beauty. He knows the culprit, but could never quite find out who.

Sometimes he found that it was not always a bane. Sometimes found himself closing his eyes when he passed by a window in Skyhold, when the wind breezed through. The mountain air was cold and bracing, and it was almost like he was up in the Tower again, eighteen years old, and in an hour or two maybe he would see Amell again, maybe they could talk a little. At the end of the day, Greagoir would give him one of those encouraging, grandfatherly pep talks that he secretly appreciated. That Cullen could find some sort of happy memory or innocence in those dark times was an encouraging thing, like a diamond in the muck. The fact that he could remember it, grasp it with trembling hands and fingers…maybe even better? Maybe he was just deluding himself, he doesn’t know. No one could tell him otherwise, because no one else knows. Everyone in that past was dead, and he found that there was a kind of comfort of that, knowing that anyone or anything that would entice him otherwise could be rebuffed with that brutal reality.

But the wind would calm, and he would find himself back in Skyhold, where dreams and memory had no place, only the raw urgency of saving the world. That was good too, the days when he couldn’t remember, when there were soldiers to train, too many reports to read, and much more to write. When he now helped in the direction of his fate than be buffered by it like a leaf in a storm, it felt good, too.

This could continue. He could forget. Somewhere in his study, the lyrium glowed in the dark, a beacon in his mind. Cullen closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, there was an apple blossom on the windowsill. Whether brought by the wind, or something else, he did not know.

And outside? Outside, it was Autumn.

_Fin._


End file.
